Sure, I thought, Carrie got it worse at her prom, and so too that over-curious little monk Venantius in The Name of the Rose—but all the same, the fine spray of fresh pig’s blood that had just caught me across the face would have to be classified as a surprise of the most unpleasant type. What’s more, the stuff was proving to be frightfully stubborn in its adherence to my glasses—solvent would obviously be required to do away with the lingering greasy smear. But so it goes in this messy business of real food, wherein unlike at the supermarket, complete meals do not materialize fully formed from a sparkling clean womb of white Styrofoam and cellophane. They start off as real flesh and blood—in this case, just token flesh (pig’s intestine, pork belly) and a whole lot of blood (100 per cent pure Ontario pig extract).

It was boudin noir day in the kitchen at Splendido, and I was along to watch and learn. Lesson one was stand back. The second—essentially peripheral—was that I should have worn a darker shirt, and probably my contact lenses, too. Because no matter how carefully you handle sausage casing, even if you keep it wet, and unravel it from the spout of the sausage funnel ever so gently as it fills, the intestine is bound to tear now and then. And while such flaws may have little consequence when said casing is being stuffed full of firm, chilled seasoned minced pork and fat on its way to becoming a saucisse de Toulouse, or some chopped-up horse destined for a nice saucisson de cheval, when the stuffing is liquid blood, the consequences can sometimes run to the dramatic. But stay the bloody course and you will find the results to be uniquely rich and quite exquisite. Ask anyone.

Well, ask anyone from elsewhere, anyway. Travel around France and you will uncover more than a dozen regional varieties: in Lyon, the sausage includes raw onion, in Auvergne, a touch of pig’s head; in Nancy—possibly in a bid to ward off Jews—the tradition demands mixing the pig’s blood with milk. The North Africans call their meat-laced version boutifar. The Basques make one out of calf’s blood (and lung) called tripoxa. The Spaniards have many varieties of morcilla, and the Portuguese call theirs morcela, both of which took root and prospered all across Latin America (I enjoyed some deep in the mountains of Colombia in late August). The Germans, Belgians and Czechs make blutwurst, bloed­worst and jelito. In eastern Europe, the most popular blood sausage is arguably kishka, wherein the blood stuffing is mixed with buckwheat kasha. And while Asians prefer their blood less as a sausage than as a pudding, congealed and cut into cubes, you still get the idea: just about every­one craves a good fix of blood now and then—everyone but us.

Splendido chef David Lee found himself in Montreal last year, at Au Pied de Cochon, the lively, though to my mind overrated, bistro on Duluth Street, tucking into a boudin that he thought might be the finest he had ever sampled. (Montrealers have never had the hang-ups about offal that Toronto diners do.) He summoned chef Martin Picard, told him so, procured the recipe (Picard uses chestnut flour, as is the custom in Auvergne), came home and started to play.